If you trace the history of what's happening, it started shortly with the Gulf War, when the US was invited by Saudi Arabia to place troops there. Many of the people in the area saw this as a US invasion. Since then, there have been several attacks attributed to Osama bin Laden, including the attacks on US embasies in Africa, the USS Cole, and the previous bombing of the WTC.

If the US had been planning attacks, as the article states, that could also be regarded as self defense from the attacks I mentioned above.

In the eyes of those who attacked the WTC, it is self defense, in the eyes of the US, we are defending ourselves.


>Do the latest reports in the UK press put the events in the US in a different light ?
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>http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,556279,00.html
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>If the report is true, could it be viewed that the attacks were not terrorism, per se, but an act of self-defence ? In the event that the Afghan government (or any other, for that matter) had issued threats of unprovoked military action against the US, would it have been acceptable for the US to take action to weaken that government - including attacks against that countries military & financial centres ?
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>Is it reasonable for the Afghan government, having heard the threats to its country & seen the build-up of troops in the neighbouring region (ostensibly on a training exercise), to believe that it was under significant threat & justified in taking pre-emptive action ?
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>Does the report change the role of the US from that of victim, to that of aggressor ? Could a plausible scenario be that the US security, military and/or government were prepared to provoke a terrorist attack in response to threats on the Taliban & Afghanistan, in order to get public backing for military action to get Bin Laden ? Could that explain the "failure" of the security services - they wanted to allow a terrorist attack, unfortunately it was bigger than expected ?
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>I realise I am being provocative here, but in light of the report in one of our national newspapers that US officials were paving the way for military action in Afghanistan in July, it does give rise to many questions that need answering.